Zugswang, White to Move
by The Ferryman
Summary: Chess, a game so often a metaphor for life. Fortunately Harry always lost the game but and not at life. Or maybe Voldemort was never much of a chess player. Sooner or later he was going to find a Dark Witch who played, and maybe she would decide the only thing better than a victory for Black was Zugswang, where there were no good moves for White. Your move, Harry.


**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter et al are the property of J. K. Rowling.

* * *

"I was expecting to be escorted back to Azkaban, or perhaps to Auror HQ for interrogation. That or 'killed while attempting to escape.' That's what your minions did to Rodolphus, after all. But the Department of Mysteries? This I did not expect."

Harry didn't reply as Delphini Riddle was shoved into a none-too-comfortable chair and bound in place with magical chains. Instead he turned to the Head Unspeakable, studiously ignoring the other half-dozen who were moving around examinging the various clocks and time-keepers in the room. "Status?"

"So far there has been a fifteen percent decrease in the duration-to-expenditure ratio of time. When the decrease reaches one hundred percent time will have slowed to a stop. Any further decrease and time will begin working backwards until we reach the point where our timeline has become disconnected from its past."

"And when we reach that point?"

"Picture a funnel with a hose at the bottom. Water is pushed out of the hose and up through the funnel so that water spills over the edges."

"Endless possibilities?"

"Within certain constraints, effectively," the Unspeakable said. "Also not really, but the metaphor holds for this discussion."

"Sure," Harry agreed.

"Our present is treading water at the top of the funnel," the Unspeakable said. "Only now someone has disconnected the hose and connected it to a new funnel. When the water drains out…" he shrugged.

"Is that a theory?" Delphini asked curiously.

"Fact," the Unspeakable said. "It's happened twice before."

"I'm assuming that by it happening before, you mean it has happened before in our collective past," she said, "so then the question becomes, if a future has become disconnected from its past and the universe it describes explodes when it is no longer connect to a past…how do you know that it has happened before?"

The Unspeakable shrugged. "Magic."

"Sensible," she agreed. "But that doesn't explain what I'm doing here?"

"You meddled with time before," Harry said. "Care to explain what you're doing out of Azkaban?"

"You didn't put me in Azkaban, Harry—you don't mind if I call you 'Harry,' do you?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "All prisoners are checked, both before incarceration and repeatedly after, for Polyjuice, glamours, even being metamorphmagus. Try again."

" _Videbis Faciem Meam_ ," Delphini said. "It's a glamour charm that is both unbreakable and undetectable, but there's a catch. It can only take on what you can see yourself as, at it doesn't work if there's active magic on you. The casting actually uses a mirror as part of the focus."

"That sounds pretty pointless."

"It does, doesn't it?" Delphini asked with a smile.

"Let me guess," Harry said dryly. "You know a way around it."

"Everyone does, well, most know the work-around anyway. The glamour itself is pretty obscure. And yes, most think it's pointless. But it isn't, not really. Not if you take Polyjuice first."

"Because Polyjuice changes your actual appearance. It isn't surface-effect like a spell," Harry said.

"At which you look like the person you polyjuiced into," the Unspeakable said. "But without needing to take Polyjuice again. It'll even circumvent pretty much any test for Polyjuice once the time limit has expired. That's brilliant."

"Only if you want to permanently lose your identity. The glamour is so complete that using a hair sample will Polyjuice a person into the glamour's form, not the original, and in the same process it disconnects previously stored samples from the person under the glamour."

"Do you know of any way to detect it?"

"As I said, it uses a mirror as a focus. If someone has a hair part, or a birthmark or something similar that overnight migrates to the opposite side of their body, it's a possible indication, though there are some other explanations that are more probable."

"But," the Unspeakable interject, "if the caster used two mirrors set at right angles during the casting…"

"Yes, that would be the sensible thing to do."

"The prisoner had a firm awareness of her identity as Delphini Riddle," Harry interrupted.

"Memory charms," Delphini shrugged. "Not _obliviate_ , obviously. But if someone wanted to be me so dearly as to hunt down a rather obscure charm that most think to be spectacularly pointless, _and_ have the patience to consider likely failure points and address them, they would most likely be able to find a way to capture a memory imprint, or possibly obtained a full personality matrix."

"We can check that," Harry said easily, writing out a short note and transfiguring it into a parchment airplane with a tap of his wand. "Azkaban has a talent for breaking down memory magic."

"It also has a talent for driving its residents insane," Delphini noted. "I mean, it _is_ the fortress of a former Dark Lord. Did the Aurors ever get around to fulling clearing it, or do they still disappear when searching the lower levels?"

"What did you do?" Harry asked.

"Nothing."

"Came to gloat as we scurry around?"

"No, actually," Delphini said. "The DMLE requested my presence."

" _What?_ "

"I told you. The person you have incarcerated in Azkaban isn't me. My lawyers have been trying to clear the matter up and the DMLE requested my presence at a hearing."

"I don't believe you."

"I have, well, I _had_ a letter. One of your goons took it."

"The deceleration is up to forty percent," an Unspeakable interjected. "Not to be a drag, but we are running out of time before we begin running out of time."

Both Harry and Delphini turned and gave him disbelieving looks.

The Unspeakable spread his hands helplessly. "Sorry, English does odd things when you start talking about manipulating time."

Harry turned back to Delphini. "Who did you kill?"

"No one," she said.

"I'm not talking about Craig—"

"As I said," Delphini cut him off. "I haven't killed anyone."

Harry smiled and pulled out another sheet of parchment.

"What's that?" the Unspeakable asked as another parchment airplane went winging off.

"Requisition form for Veritaserum."

"About that… You might want to verify that I was hear at the behest of the legal branch on the DMLE. I gave a fair amount of testimony under Veritaserum earlier."

"Your point?" Harry asked irritably.

"The dosing is pretty strict. Too much in too short a time can, well, I'd hate for you to end up in Azkaban for poisoning me."

"Wouldn't matter," the Unspeakable said. "At the current rate of collapse our timeline will implode before the DMLE can schedule a hearing before the Wizengamot."

"I suppose I can check," Harry said. A third parchment airplane soared out of the room.

"You know," Delphini said with a wry smile, "if I _was_ going to back in time and meddle, despite it being against commonsense—"

"And the law," Harry said.

"Commonsense is much more powerful, and self-preserving, than the law," Delphini countered. "As I was saying, if I _were_ to risk all of…this, it would probably be to save a life."

"Your own," Harry said.

"There's that nasty suspicious paranoid Auror-training doing the talking again," Delphini noted. "Always assuming that everyone's motivations to be self-serving."

"Craig Bowker," Harry said. "You save his life, you save your own."

"The person in Azkaban impersonating me, you mean," Delphini said.

Harry turned to the Unspeakable. "Do you have a time-turner?"

"Use of temporal-magics will put strain on the timeline, hastening degradation."

"If I stop her change it'll reconnect our timeline to the original base?" Harry asked.

"Well, yes."

"Look, I'll stop before the change, if who I think it is, is still alive—"

"It won't work like that," the Unspeakable said. "Upstream of the event for _us_ will still be in _our_ broken off time-stem. You need to jump back to before the break. That is what stresses the timeline."

"So we can localize when the break happens?"

"In theory," the Unspeakable said. "Even a little temporal magic will stress the timeline. Time turners are the worst. Even sub-jumping will noticeably hasten the collapse of our timeline. But if you jump to before the break, well, you'll have one chance to correct it. Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"We're talking about time. Maybe."

"I've got a question," Delphini said.

"Haven't you caused enough trouble?" Harry demanded.

"You aren't thinking this through," Delphini said. "It's like the mirror with the _Videbis Faciem Meam_. If you don't think it through and get a little thing wrong, it can have consequences."

"Okay," Harry said slowly. "I'll bite. What _kind_ of consequences?"

"This Bowker kid that you're obsessed with, the one my double killed—"

"What about him?" Harry interrupted.

"Well, you're sworn to uphold the law, right?" Delphini asked. "Magical Oaths and such?"

"Yes."

"Well, let's say your right. That I went back and saved him. I'm not saying I am, mind you, but let's go with it for the sake of argument."

"Let's," Harry said tautly.

"If you go back and…what, stop me stop someone impersonating me from killing him, would that make you an accessory to murder? Or would it be considered an enabling action and thus be considered entrapment?" Delphini asked. " _And_ , if it turns out that I _didn't_ go back and stop someone impersonating me from killing him, if you stand aside and let him be killed would it—"

"Shut up," Harry said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, 'shut up,'" Harry repeated. "As in, close your mouth and stop talking."

* * *

"I was wondering if you would show up."

"Delphini," Harry sighed. There hadn't been one break in the timeline, there'd been two. Fortunately, they'd happened in reverse chronological order so following back to the first (temporally) break had been easy, and correcting it would allow him to travel to the first (chronologically) break to fix that as well.

"Harry," she replied. "I take it we'll talk?"

"Yes we—" Harry broke off as the tense registered. "We're in your past."

"Well, our collective past, anyway," Delphini said. "Do you think the Unspeakables have a secret set of tenses they use for discussing temporal magic?"

"It wouldn't surprise me," Harry said dryly. "Is this where we fight?"

"No," she said, tossing her wand so that it landed in the grass at his feet. She visibly perked up. "I know, we could call this a definitive experiment in nature versus nurture."

"What?" he asked.

She gestured and, with her wand in his hand and both fixed on her, Harry quickly glanced around what was clearly a muggle neighborhood. A very _familiar_ muggle neighborhood.

"I'm not Hermione, and even she would find experimenting with infants to be unconscionable at best, morally suspect at worst."

"Well, I _am_ a Dark Witch. Or at least that's what you keep sayying I am."

"Besides, don't you need someone capable of measuring outcome? That'll hardly happen if you cause our timeline to collapse."

"Point," Delphini said. "That is definitely a point…" but she didn't move from where she stood.

"That's hardly a loving and supportive home," Harry said.

"Maybe." Delphini held up a hand. "No, you'd know better than anyone. Still… They managed to turn out one decent sort."

"They will never love you," Harry said.

"Maybe," she said. "But I think at least one of them might, which is more than I ever had growing up."

"You'll be executed for this," Harry breathed.

"Um… Two questions," she said. "First, were you around long enough to be sure Polyjuice wasn't used?"

"And second?" Harry ground out.

"How can you be sure that the point I left to do this happened _before_ I'm brought to trial?" she asked. "You can't punish me for future crimes, Harry. Even if they happened in the chronological past."

"I can't get you to change your mind?" Harry asked.

"I've made my choices. I'll live with the consequences."

"Destroying an entire timeline and everyone that ever might be in it for a chance to save one person."

"Yes," Delphini said. "As I said, I made my choice and accepted the consequences of that choice. I suppose your chasers have the quaffle now."

"And you'll let me change things back. Just like that."

"You'll be destroying an entire timeline and everyone that ever might be in it, condemning an innocent babe to a miserable existence, and setting in motion at least one murder. Not to mention you'd be putting the timeline repeatedly at risk. But sure. Just like that."

"You're threatening my family."

"And there you go making it personal," Delphini said. "You don't see me spouting off about you deciding that, even as a baby, I deserve to go to Azkaban."

"I didn't say that," Harry said.

"Okay," Delphini said.

She looked across the street. "Standing where we are, with all the possibilities of future in front of us…are you going to give her a meaningful chance _not_ to go to Azkaban?"

Harry didn't answer.

"I mean, it's that or you decide to put her in a future where she _has_ to go to Azkaban. Those are your only real choices here."

Harry clenched his hands.

"Yeah. That's pretty much what I thought,"

She pulled out a watch and consulted it. "Almost time for me to be going."

"Why wait around for me?" Harry asked.

Delphini shook her head. "It isn't all about you, Harry. I wanted to give myself a chance to change my mind."

"Really?" Harry asked skeptically.

"Really." She looked around the street. "Well, that and Dumbledore may be a great wizard, but he is far too trusting. I couldn't do much, of course, but I wanted to give us the best chance we have.

"Goodbye, Brother."

Harry stared at the spot Delphini had been standing a moment before. Then back across the street at the darkened stoop of #4 Privet Drive. Specifically at the basket on the front stoop in which two babies slept. " _Fuck_."


End file.
